Like the allegorical Zen bucket that breaks bringing abrupt satori through the metaphorical flow of gushing water, I was drenched by the meaning of ritual one night in Seville - back in the early nineties - when I broke away from a delicious Cruzcampo beer and the sterile role of bemused spectator retrofitting maleficent KKK meaning to the hooded figures that kept marching past, and joined one of the many processions that fill the streets of the Andalucian capital during Easter week.

I walked behind a Madonna enveloped in flowers carried by passion-driven costaleros and in front of the band, with an unnatural gait and frequent stops and the heady, heavy smell of incense, the silence and the drums, the odd saeta sang from an iron-wrought balcony, the barefoot penitents, the tranquil trance induced by evaporating hours, the cobbled stones made soft and slippery from the dripping wax of uncountable candles, all the purple cloth, the orange and jasmine blossom, a merging of individualities and aching leg muscles and then, all of a sudden, I glimpsed the knowledge of rite and knew its feeling. Fleetingly.